Janet Echelman Weaves Urban Lace

Janet Echelman’s (LF 2008) public artworks – monumental, voluptuous, light as air - transform and animate urban spaces. She is celebrated as one of Architectural Digest’s 2012 Innovators in a profile by Patti Brown (LF 2010).

Echelman will be speaking at 2 upcoming conferences in Phoenix, AZ: at the American Society of Landscape Architects on Oct 1, and the International City/County Management Association on Oct 10, where she will be delivering the keynote. Phoenix is the site of Eschelman’s “Her Secret is Patience,” built during her Loeb Fellowship year. Videos of Eschelman’s work in motion and her TEDtalk may be viewed on the Knight Foundation website.

Also among the eight AD Innovators are Weiss/Manfredi, the Manhattan firm of Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi (design critics in urban planning and design at the GSD last year), and West 8, whose principal Adriaan Geuze has lectured at the GSD. Gueze’s landscape designs play on illusion and imagination to mold nature in unexpected ways. Weiss/ Manfredi’s projects succeed at breaking down barriers between the built and natural environments, and their proposal won the National Mall Competition for redesign of the Sylvan Theater. Their aim: to “bring into focus that which is unseen, creating opportunities for invention, transformation and use.”